


sweet turning sour and untouchable

by ivyspinners



Category: My Skin - Natalie Merchant (Song)
Genre: F/F, Misses Clause Challenge, Superpowers, Undercover Missions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-24
Updated: 2016-12-24
Packaged: 2018-09-07 20:43:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,628
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8815660
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ivyspinners/pseuds/ivyspinners
Summary: A girl and a truck travel to the sea. They may bring along too many memories.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thecarlysutra](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thecarlysutra/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide!
> 
> Huge thanks to Jelena for the emotional hand holding and beta.

_"Come up for coffee?" Brianna had asked, so many times, hovering on her doorstep._

_Every evening, Amy had hesitated, sometimes longing, sometimes rueful. Her expressions were rare, hidden like glinting gold beneath a smooth flowing river, and Brianna treasured each one. But every evening Amy stepped back. "Another time."_

_And every evening, she watched the profile of Amy's firm shoulders move out of sight, and went to bed dreaming of her pale fingers in Amy's dark hair._

* * *

Brianna spent her first week free wishing the ground would swallow her whole.

She spent the second week trying to make sure tequila did it instead.

By the time news broke that the Hellhounds were going down, she was bleary eyed and drinking every regular at _Jason_ 's under the table. Didn’t stop her from peering through her bangs at the TV screen behind the bar. Mugshots flicked by, one after the other, until they blurred together. Good.

When the news item finished without ever showing black hair paired with darker eyes, she shouldn’t have been surprised. Hated herself for waiting, breath bated, for a glimpse of her anyway.

Her drink was cold in her hand, icy to the point of pain. She wrapped both hands around her reward – her opponent was snoring loudly across the table – and tipped it down her throat.

* * *

Another day, another rippling sea of grass, sun-browned, stalks swaying in the wind. Brianna made the trip to the sea every summer, but she never started in the same place, and never took the same route. It made the ritual feel new.

Secure on her truck’s dashboard, Brianna’s cell phone buzzed.

 _Amy_ , the sender’s name said. Her stomach clenched into a knot; icy pain made her fingers ache. It took a supreme effort to swipe the message aside, archived for later.

Deleting it meant opening it. Brianna didn’t want to look.

Grass gave way to sand and shallow water, waves crashing against a distant shoreline. The hum of her engine was the only sign of life on the deserted interstate. Brianna preferred forests, longed for the pines and birdsong of the forests her siblings watched over, but this was enough. Listening, her hands relaxed.

* * *

She wondered how the bar was coping without half its staff. Brianna had left when the Hellhounds were taken into custody, caught between exultation and betrayal.

She had come to Santo Domingo for the promise of elemental Gifts, and instead she'd found the Hellhounds. To learn Santo Domingo was like every place else, subtle gifts nurtured and concrete Gifts idolised, had been a betrayal.

Brianna had hated the Hellhounds and tolerated them in turn, tried to keep them peripheral to her life. The Hellhounds had thought her capable only of cooling water a few degrees, thought her fiery hair pretty, and nothing more. They'd still tried to rope her in for that Gift.

* * *

On the second week, after a night at an unfamiliar bar, Brianna woke with three outgoing calls to Amy Ye, and five missed calls in return. She didn’t remember any of them.

She decided not to go drinking after that.

* * *

_They wandered through abandoned factories teetering from age; empty basketball courts echoing with footsteps and shouts; the bottom of a chainlink fence that said "Be Aware of the Dog - Please Pet Dog" outside a schoolyard; graffiti cats that followed people with their eyes; playgrounds of abandoned tires; glass, concrete, pavement, and the colourless people that lived in the spaces between. Amy watched the people, offering insights that made Brianna choke back laughter, and Brianna watched Amy._

_Amy had a strong jaw, no-nonsense haircut, and a job working with cars that made people think she was steady. She was American-Chinese, so they thought her serious and thoughtful. They didn’t understand she had a wicked mind, too, ready to cut and ready to laugh._

_The moon rose, still and distant, as stars peeked into view. Here in Santa Domingo, electrical lights swallowed its majesty, but Brianna realized then they’d been wandering for hours. Their footsteps covered every corner of the neighbourhood except the Hellhounds’ base. Enough was enough._

_"I know the neighbourhood is, what’d you call it, magic in its alleys and history, but I didn’t call in favours and finish early for this."_

_"There’s a music festival across the river," Amy offered with a smile. Her eyes were huge, pupils dilated in the darkness, an edge of wild abandon where she was so often reserved, and a thrill went up Brianna’s spine at the sight. The low sound of her voice drifted across Brianna’s senses like smoke. "Join me."_

_"Engine grease and the classics?" Brianna asked shakily. Then she shrugged, combing her fingers through her shoulder-length hair, tried for casual. "What the hell. Let's go for it."_

_As always, crossing the river was like stepping into a different world. There were vendors selling plates of stained glass, with pictures that seemed to move in the corner of your eye; flowers sprouting out of season, riots of colour; buzzing electrical lights that made patterns so real, Brianna could have sworn water was lapping at the soles of her trainers, taste the wind and ocean on her tongue. Stalls selling fried shrimp, stalls wafting the sweetness of freshly baked biscuits, perfectly formed banana cake. Dozens of gifts on display if one knew what to look for._

_There were so many gifts in this world, subtle, impossible to pin down as magic. Gifts were rarer, clearer to the eye, and loved for it, but also a trap. To adapt your gift to your lifestyle was a talent; to turn from your Gift, unacceptable._

_“Here,” Amy said, tugging her along. Her hand was curled over the bare skin of Brianna’s elbow, every single finger printed there like a brand. She looked back, grinned, as wicked as a pixie. “What do you think?”_

_No one had touched Brianna so casually for a long time._

_Her heart raced. Brianna thought, suddenly and quite clearly, that she should not be doing this. Amy was enchanted with both sides of the river and wanted to stay. Brianna wanted neither. And for all her openness tonight, Brianna never felt that she truly knew the person by her side. Not like she wanted to._

_“I think your taste in music is awful,” she said instead. Amy’s fingers were still there, right on her bare skin, making it difficult to think. She shivered._

_Amy blinked, and before Brianna realised what was happening, there was an arm thrown around her shoulder. Heat blazed from Amy, warming the air around her, more than it had earlier. More than could come from most human beings._

_Their eyes locked, startled, faces inches apart. For the first time, she thought, Amy looked uncertain._

_"Better?" Amy murmured. Her hair smelled faintly like lavender._

_“Um,” she said, through the cloud of_ ‘yes, more’ _and_ ‘Amy has a Gift, and she’s just shown it to me’ _and_ ‘warm.’ _All she could do was smile back; this seemed to be enough._

_“Music sucks, but the players are talented,” she managed to say._

_She dreaded the day she would have to walk away from this._

_As it turned out, she shouldn’t have worried about being the one to leave._

* * *

Water and sand had made way for forest when she received another text. Tree tops locked overhead, a leafy ceiling filtering out like until she was driving into cool, comforting darkness.

There was gift there, in the subtle, indiscernible way most people had gifts. Brianna would have missed it too if she weren’t so familiar with gifts of plants, the way it manifested in the strength of those tree trunks, the nearly unnatural way they grew wild along the roadside, but not a single root actually crossed it. Entering was the greatest relief she’d had this year.

But even here, on familiar territory, it was too much. She archived the text without reading.

* * *

Brianna had been expecting the ambush when it came, if only because she had been expecting it the entire trip.

No one ran from Johnny Angel for long before being reminded of their obligations. No one ran after getting friendly with what had turned out to be the enemy – never Brianna’s enemy, it occurred to her more and more often, just Johnny’s – who destroyed the Hellhounds from inside out. Brianna had signed her affidavit to the court, filled it with all she knew, and started her yearly trip early just in case.

They hadn’t come to destroy evidence, what scarce evidence she could provide, but for vengeance against the source.

They had, she thought, chosen a bad place to plant an ambush—a bad location for a girl who had grown up in forests, a bad target of a woman whose hands were aching with so much power they were going numb.

The entire thing was a little anti-climatic, after all that anticipation.

Her oldest brother had once scuttled up arches of fir, not realising that its leaves couldn’t cover his figure completely, and Brianna always spotted him first. She spotted the first would-be attacker too, a glimpse of his back, peering in the direction where she’d left her car running, but shackled.

He was the first to go down, a thin layer of ice crackling across his skin and creeping into the branch where he was crouching, locking him in place. No one would figure anything out until he couldn’t respond.

Brianna pressed close to the fir tree, closed her eyes, listening. Unlike her siblings, she didn’t have so much as a green nail in her body, but her ears were sharp.

A twig snapped, followed by shoes scuffing against rock, beyond her line of sight.

She raised a fist, concentrating. Pressure built up until it chilled her very bones, until she was shuddering, biting her lip to keep from screaming, and when she heard the sound again, she slid out from her hiding place, _thrusting_ in his direction.

The man froze over, gun half-raised. He hadn’t been able to make a sound.

It was too much. The ice in her surged like a living creature, rushing to the point of weakness in her will. Brianna fell onto her knees, panting, struggling against the need to let her Gift explode out. Pressure mounted behind her eyes, and light haloed every object in her field of vision.

She couldn’t go on much longer like this. She had to leave.

Though her muscles screamed, Brianna managed to stagger to her feet. Step by step, she limped towards the truck. As she stumbled past the man she’d frozen on the ground, she stopped, murmuring just for his benefit, “How many did he send?”

He glared back; if the ice hadn’t grown into his mouth, stopping his voice, he’d no doubt be cursing the air blue.

Ah—Brianna recognised him. One of three brothers, who always hunted together, or not at all. One more then.

She found the third one on the way to the truck, on his hands as he maneuvered beneath it. She iced him, and then froze the bomb he’d attached until it grew so cold, it disintegrated.

The chill in the air was obvious by now, and his eyes were wide and staring. The Hellhounds had never known the extent of her powers, and hadn’t prepared accordingly; Brianna had just enough energy to be thankful.

It was a struggle to rein it in enough to start her truck, but an hour later, she was leaving the patch of woods for the one she had once called home.

* * *

The rangers’ shack loomed, painfully familiar. As she pulled close, Brianna could see vegetables growing out of season, roses with thorns as long as her fingers, and the ever-present trees. It made her want to sob in relief.

Brianna knew she shouldn’t have come, but she hadn’t been able to help herself. None of her foster siblings would be home. They were too busy tending the acres of public forest, as the generations before them had. She wouldn’t have to face them. And Brianna needed this.

She stumbled around the back—then stopped. Sobs clawed up her throat again, this time in relief.

Brianna had stopped visiting when their mother passed on, but right there was a section of newly tilted land. There would be seeds beneath, she knew; they just needed a winter to begin to sprout.

She marched to the centre, drawing breath deep into her lungs. The ice in her surged, and she let it; there were frost crystals in her exhale, cold rushing from her skin and deep into the ground as she breathed out.

Out and out and out, the pressure in her skull falling, until it settled beneath her skin. The ice still pressed anxiously for an exit, but it was controllable now.

She had to keep going, still wasn’t ready to come home yet, but as the truck pulled away, Brianna could think again.

She sent her oldest sister a thank you. Brianna and her siblings were not close, but they would understand.

* * *

_Amy_ , her phone said, buzzing with another text.

Brianna remembered when Amy had had a last name, when Amy had been a friendly face fallen into bad company, when she’d been torn between her aversion to Johnny Angel’s gang and the way Amy’s calloused hands traced circles across the bar top. When she’d had to think long and hard about why she wanted to invite Amy into her apartment—to give her advice, or seek her touch?

Amy had been real like nothing else was. Amy Ye had never existed.

The last time they’d spoken it was across a table at the police department, as Brianna was let out for her "assistance gathering evidence against the Hellhounds". Brianna was free to go, and so she had chosen to leave.

* * *

_There had been no warning except police sirens flooding into the Hellhounds' base; no information from the detective who came to take her statement. Yes, Brianna had worked at a bar they frequented; yes, they’d asked her to join but she’d only slung their drinks; no, she hadn’t ever become a member, was more another person in the neighbourhood the gang considered theirs. She hadn't realized the reason for the raid until police streamed out with people with Gifts, kept by the Hellhounds as unwilling weapons._

_There was no explanation until Brianna was leaving the station and caught a glimpse of her, sitting next to the superintendent, eyes closed, nodding. And then, it had been so clear._

_"Wait – Brianna – can I – "_

_Her hands hurt. Her skin hurt. Ice came in waves beneath her skin. A touch, a kiss, and it would erupt and freeze Amy whole._

_“Let me go, let me go!”_

_“I can’t – Brianna, you’re freezing!”_

_“You use fire. I use ice. I’m fine. Look, I gave my statement, I signed my affidavit with relish. Do you need me for anything else on this case?”_

_A hesitation, a tremor, as if Amy had flinched. Amy’s grip on her weakened then dropped off all together. Brianna stared furiously ahead. She didn’t turn around, didn’t want to see Amy’s face when it would only hurt._

_“Amy,” she said, quiet, “I understand. I’m glad you took them down. But I can’t say I’m glad I got to meet you, if it was just the job.” Her fingers were freezing; she had to leave._

_Amy’s voice was small. “Can I see you later this week?”_

_Brianna’s head hurt. “Sure,” she said._

_She left town the next day._

* * *

She had not seen Amy’s eyes that day. But she thought, with the clarity her family’s gift had afforded, that she’d heard regret. Hope.

* * *

At last, the sea.

The Pacific stretched out as far as the eye could see, farther, green-blue and shining under the sun. Brianna turned the keys in the ignition and withdrew, sitting back to take in the sight. The beach sparkled like it was filled with diamonds, crossed with lines of shells and flotsam. There wasn’t a single animal or human in sight.

She wanted to appreciate it longer, but the sea called. Brianna had waited too long, and too much had happened over the past two weeks; her Gift was churning, seeking a way out.

Brianna stumbled onto the beach, shedding her shoes and pieces of clothing until she was down to her underwear. Taking a deep breath, she waded into the surf.

To someone else, the water might have felt cool, but it was nothing against the ice under her skin. Foam reached her knees, then her hips, until the warmth seeped through her muscles, into her veins, and coursed into her bones. Water lapped against her lip, and the sea spray stung her eyes.

Taking a deep breath, Brianna dived beneath the surface, and let the floodgates down.

The ice of her Gift left in a torrent, pouring out through every square inch of skin, streaming like lightning out of the bay and dissipating into the vastness of the sea. It rushed where water rushed, beyond sight, beyond her senses; streamed with pure delight across rocks, shells, the delicate fins of fish. The sheer relief was astounding; it was better than joy, better than sex, almost as good as intimacy.

Now it was less a matter of pressure, and more a matter of will. Brianna reached deep within herself, mind coiling around her heart and abdomen, and _pushed_ the last clinging vestiges of power, built up in the year since she’d last done this.

When she surfaced again with a gasp, she felt immeasurably lighter, like she’d been slowly dying and was now cured. It was, Brianna thought, exactly what had happened.

* * *

Afterwards, Brianna sat by the sea, contemplating her plans for the next year, turning her phone in her hands. She could choose a new place, to shed her skin as she had many times before, and leave only one place as her lodestone—the family home she hadn’t visited for so long. Brianna had spent five Christmases in different cities, with people she didn’t let in, and she could do it again. But when she closed her eyes, she remembered joy, and hope. They weren't such common things to be left behind without a thought.

She opened her eyes, and dialled.

“Amy Lin speaking,” answered the voice, sharp, but distracted.

The world shifted; settled.

“It’s me,” Brianna said.

There was a pause on the other side, and then a rush: “Are you safe? Are you okay?”

“I just needed some time to think,” Brianna said. “Thank you for giving me that.” Five text messages, and five missed calls on the night Brianna had dialled her number; it was a show of restraint Brianna wouldn’t have managed.

“It’s the least I could do,” Amy said. “Unless you wanted me to follow you.”

Brianna blinked, watching seagulls rise and fall over the retreating tide. “I think I just have a couple of questions.”

“Oh. Okay. Ask away,” Amy said, voice shaky even from across the line.

Despite herself, Brianna smiled. It was good to know she hadn't been the only one feeling uncertain. "It must have been obvious that I wanted you. Wouldn’t it have been easier to pretend to want me back?"

There was a faint, unsteady chuckle. “You mean intimacy?”

“The sort that makes people talk,” Brianna agreed. The intimacy that glued a family of foster children together even if they weren’t otherwise close; the intimacy nurtured in wandering around the city, in private conversations, in touches and kisses.

“I could tell straight away you weren’t in on the secrets,” Amy said, after a pause. There had been no profit, and so she'd never bothered.

It hurt. It hurt, Brianna thought she could accept it. "Then I’m glad you never pretended to want to."

“I wanted to,” was the immediate, heated response. “All those times you invited me up? They’ve happened on other operations. I’ve never gone up _for coffee_ , but dear god, I wanted to. I didn’t join you, but if you knew what I did alone when I got home . . .”

“Oh.” It was all she could think to say for a moment. “I . . . why didn’t you, then?”

She could hear the resignation in Amy’s sigh, static-filled as it was across the line.

"Because you thought I was Amy Ye, and I wasn't," Amy said simply. "I didn’t want it to be a lie, and then a betrayal. I couldn’t kid myself and pretend, no matter how much I felt for you." A pause. "But you know about me now."

It was too much. Brianna closed her eyes, pulling her phone from her ear. She focused on sound of waves crashing to the shore, the claw of seagulls, the way ice trembled against her skin, but settled with a few seconds of breathing.

“I do,” she said into the air.

“Brianna? Are you there?”

Brianna brought the phone back up to her ear. "I do," she said. “But I have to think about it. And I want to know now: Will you lie to me again?”

“I will never lie to you,” Amy said without hesitation. “There’ll be stuff on the job I can’t tell you about, but I will never lie to you, and I will never mislead you. That’s a promise.”

Brianna sighed. “I have to think about it.”

“I’ll be waiting,” Amy said.

Brianna lowered her phone. She stared at the sea for a long time, thinking about betrayal, about the truth, about forgiveness, and the next year of her life.

Maybe Amy’s promises were meant to sweeten the blow of her identity. Brianna didn’t need them. But she wanted them.

* * *

For the first time in years, when she left, she took the same route back.

 

fin.


End file.
